


VIII

by Crowgirl



Series: Welcoming Silences [9]
Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Flashbacks, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, coming to terms, dealing with the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 15:35:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4751663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paul spreads the small snaps  out on the bedspread like a hand of cards and scoots slightly to one side so he can see them all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	VIII

That night, Paul goes up into the attic to pull down his pre-war suitcase. It will be handily large enough for everything Jane wants sent on and it isn’t as if it’s doing anything more than gathering dust here. When he picks it up, something inside slides and rattles, and he puts it down again and clicks the locks open. He’d thought it was empty but there are some envelopes thrust inside. He picks them up and turns them over -- oh, yes, he remembers these. When they’d been moving here, they’d been in his dresser drawer and he’d simply shoved them in with his shirts.

He takes them downstairs, suitcase in his other hand, and sits on the bed. There are three envelopes -- one larger than the other two and one of the small ones very obviously empty. He peers into it out of habit and puts it on the bedside table to take downstairs and add to the kitchen firing. He opens the larger envelope first, shakes it slightly, and a handful of small snaps fall out and one larger photograph. 

The larger photograph he pushes aside immediately. it’s a copy print of a portrait photograph his mother insisted on having taken when he got his first policing job and he’d saved it more because he remembers how proud she was of it then out of any love for his own face. He’d just had the regulation haircut done and, to his eye, he looks like a wingnut. 

Paul spreads the small snaps out on the bedspread like a hand of cards and scoots slightly to one side so he can see them all. He isn’t sure how looking at them makes him feel -- his chest is tight and empty and aching all at once and he rubs absently at the center of his breastbone with the heel of one hand. 

The small snaps are from a photo booth in Brighton -- at least, he remembers it being Brighton. It’s possible he’s mixing up memories. He and David spent more than one summer together, he knows that, but the remembrance blurs them all together.

He reaches out, nudges one of the small photos away from the others, and stares at his own youthful face. 

He’s grinning, mugging frantically for the camera, a shaggy lock of hair falling over his eyes, his nose still a bit too long for his face, his cheeks a bit too thin. He’s being pushed slightly to one side by the other boy in the picture. David was -- is, for all Paul knows -- a little taller than him, dark-haired where he is light, rounder in the face with startlingly light eyes, pale blue ringed with black, giving him a look of perpetual slight surprise or intense attention. 

They’re shoving each other in the photos, trading off making faces at the camera; there’s more than one in the handful that’s just a blur of his shoulder moving or the side of David’s face. The sharp light from the cheap camera set-up bleaches them both, making him lighter and David darker than they ever really were.

He pushes the snaps about with a fingertip, remembering the hot salt air that filled the booth, the smell of warm metal and cheap dye from the curtain that separated them from the beach. He might be conflating summers again but he thinks that they’d just had fish and chips while sitting at the edge of a pier -- deckchairs were a luxury they hadn’t wanted to waste money on. They’d thrown chips to the gulls.

He doesn’t remember now why they thought the photo booth was a good idea -- probably because it was there and it was Saturday afternoon and they were wasting the day together and one of them had a few pence burning a hole in his pocket. 

He pushes the others away slowly and picks up the one he singled out before. 

In this picture, he and David are still. David’s looking sideways at him, one eye on the camera but mostly smiling at Paul. He’s looking directly at David, the fingers of one hand just visible on David’s shoulder, as if--

Paul rubs his thumb over the photograph, tries to remember, tries to look at what is in front of him. If this were just a photo -- if he had been handed this as part of a case file -- 

He scowls at the snap. If he had been handed this as part of a case file, he probably would have been being asked for his opinion on possible infringement of Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act because what’s going on in this photograph is not innocent. David’s eyes are soft, a little unfocused, and his hand, Paul’s hand, is placed as if he is about to slip his fingers behind David’s head and tug him forward into a kiss.

He presses the ball of his thumb hard over his own face. What had he been thinking? There was just a thin curtain between them and the beach -- the wind could have blown it aside, someone could have yanked it open thinking the thing was empty, the smaller children loved to use the booths as part of elaborate games of hide’n’seek--

* * *

_David’s skin feels a little tacky under his fingers; there’s a sharp difference between skin and the rough cloth of his shirt collar. All Paul’s senses seem to have narrowed down to smell and touch as David half-turns towards him, light eyes clear in the dim light of the booth, mouth opening to ask something._

_All he would have to do is pull David a tiny bit forward -- just a tiny bit and he’d know if David still tasted of malt vinegar or if the candy floss had overwhelmed it._

* * *

But he hadn’t done it. Whatever the reason, whatever he’d told himself that he can’t remember now, he hadn’t done it. 

Slowly, he slides his thumb across the thin paper until he’s blocking out David’s face. 

This photograph is all of fifteen years old; he’s a different man now: left school, had sex, gotten a job, gotten married, gone to war. 

And, somehow, he feels tonight as if he hasn’t ever left that photo booth.


End file.
